Free Republic

The Obama administration has taken federal-state relations to a new low in its quest for an unprecedented expansion of presidential power. In response to Arizona’s efforts to identify and arrest undocumented immigrants, the president claims that he can preempt state law whenever its enforcement might irritate a foreign government. This unconstitutional power grab cannot stand. While the challenge by 26 states to the 2010 Affordable Care Act seeks limits on Congress’s powers, the Arizona law defends the fundamental authority of states to act in contravention of the president’s preferences. There is genuine controversy over the Arizona immigration policy of penalizing...

By T.J. Pignataro - News Staff Reporter 03/26/08 A public alert was issued early this evening by Buffalo Police, warning that a gang could be staging rear-end collisions tonight on area roadways and then attacking drivers as part of an initiation ritual. Commissioner H. McCarthy Gipson called an emergency news conference at police headquarters just before 6:30 p.m. to make the announcement. He said police received "credible information" late this afternoon suggesting that the initiation ritual could involve gang member recruits intentionally causing rear-end collisions and then robbing or assaulting the other driver. Gipson suggested motorists be aware of their...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A U.S. Army medic jailed for desertion after refusing to return to Iraq is on a mission to tell young Americans about the grim realities of war before they join the military. Mexican-born combat medic Agustin Aguayo, in Germany to receive a peace award, told Reuters that U.S. Army recruitment methods were unfair as young people got a one-sided, positive picture of combat. "I want to bring young people awareness. We ask them to sacrifice so much yet we don't educate them about the realities of war," said Aguayo, who describes himself as a conscientious objector, in...

For years, the vast majority of politicians in the main parties have avoided having honest public conversation about the extent and consequences of immigration. The fear of appearing racist, or giving any ground to the arguments of the far right, has left most MPs and commentators in Pollyanna territory - extolling the economic and cultural benefits of immigration and glossing over problems. That has done the nation no favours, because the consequences of rapid social change have been scarcely studied, let alone addressed. And it has increased many people's distrust of the political universe, as the gulf between their own...

Didn't see one up, but Matthews has been giving me too many straight lines to pass up on!!!

IXMIQUILPAN, Hidalgo — On a misty, moonless night, the group scurried down the canyon wall, their feet slipping in the an kle-high mud. The sirens grew louder as their guide, clad in a ski mask and known only as Poncho, urged them to run faster. “Hurry up! The Border Pa trol is coming!” A couple in matching de signer tennis outfits loped awkwardly along, the boyfriend clutching a digi tal video camera and strug gling to keep the pop-out screen steady. The 20 or so people flee ing the Border Patrol aren’t undocumented immi grants — they’re tourists about 700...

The Border: It takes a lot of nerve for a chief of state to criticize another nation's crime rate. It takes even more nerve to ship one's own criminals there and then complain about the crime rate. Two weeks ago, when U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza warned tactfully about an explosion of crime on the Mexican border and urged U.S. citizens to be cautious there, he was only doing his job. But it didn't take long for Mexican President Vicente Fox and Foreign Minister Ernesto Derbez to jump all over the U.S., piously claiming that crime at the border...

The president-elect says he´ll seek U.S. immigration reform before Bush leaves office in early 2009 The president-elect says he will try to do what his predecessor couldn´t in six years: Win an immigration accord that will let millions more Mexicans work in the United States legally. Felipe Calderón said Thursday he is committed to winning sweeping immigration reform in the U.S. Congress before U.S. President George W. Bush leaves office in January 2009. Calderón, who spoke with Bush by phone on Wednesday, said he believes the White House is ready for action. "We will work intensely over the next two...

An eerie quiet has descended over the past week on Fulton Street, a stretch of weather-beaten apartment buildings in eastern Linda Vista that is home to a large number of recent immigrants, some of them legal residents, others not. Some people have skipped work. Others have skipped doctor appointments. Children are walking to school more frequently by themselves, neighbors say, because their parents are afraid to accompany them outside. “Today the migra was here,” explained Jose Cardenas, 30, one of those here legally, on a gray afternoon this week when the sidewalks were empty and the street deserted save for...

May 28, 1924: Congress establishes United States Border Patrol http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/daybyday/05-28-003.html On this day in 1924, the U.S. Congress established the United States Border Patrol as part of the Immigration Bureau, an arm of the Department of Labor. Its duties included the prevention of smuggling and the arrest of illegal entrants into the United States. During Prohibition smuggling absorbed most of the attention of the border patrol, as bootleggers avoided the bridges and slipped their forbidden cargo across the Rio Grande by way of pack mules. In 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt united the Bureau of Immigration and the Bureau of...

Carlos Guerra: The immigration smoke-and-mirrors show is coming to a head http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/columnists/cguerra/stories/MYSA052506.01B.guerra.1cbd3e7a.html http://tinyurl.com/gsbal Web Posted: 05/25/2006 12:00 AM CDT San Antonio Express-News With elections less than six months off, chances that the U.S. House and Senate will agree on the "comprehensive immigration reform bill" that President Bush promised are iffy, at best. This isn't to say that some sort of immigration bill won't pass. But with Republicans deeply divided over the issue, while competing pressure groups mount grass-roots campaigns that are clogging phone systems and e-mail servers, it won't be anything decisive. It is far more likely to be a...

El Paso, Texas, Mar 14 (EFE).- The Rio Grande, deserts of Arizona or the U.S. Border Patrol generally are not the most daunting obstacles to entry into the United States for many Central American emigrants, most of whom have made a perilous journey across the big nation of Mexico. Mexican immigration authorities intercepted and deported 232,000 Central Americans last year, compared with a total of 72,561 people from Central and South America who were caught and sent home during the 2005 fiscal year by the U.S. Border Patrol. Two men who managed to make it all the way from the...

Guatemala City, Dec 29 (EFE).- Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein on Thursday described as "an insult to Latin America" the U.S. proposal to build a wall along its border with Mexico. "We take it as a total insult to all Latin America that a government calling itself a friend and partner in the region only wants our money and our goods, but sees our people as if they were an epidemic. They treat us as if we were a sub-hemisphere of criminals," Stein told reporters. The vice president was talking about United States plans to build an wall along its...

Migra raid tears parents from kids Published Aug 6, 2005 8:57 PM Undocumented immigrant workers contribute billions in profits to the U.S. capitalist economy. But they face what can only be described as state terror, as this news item shows. La Migra—the despised immigration police—raided a poultry factory in Arka delphia, Ark., on July 28. The agents arrested 119 workers and dragged them off to face deportation. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid left no time for the parents of about 30 children to call and make arrangements for their care. Kids as young as 3 months old were...

Agents from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency raided a poultry plant in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, this week, arresting 119 plant workers the agency said were illegal aliens, the Siftings Herald News has reported. Ronnie Farnam, manager of the Petit Jean Poultry operation, was quoted as saying the company had to cut production by about 70 per cent due to the loss of workers, but he believes many of the workers actually have the necessary paperwork to stay in the United States. He said the federal agents entered the plant without warning. "It was disturbing. There was no reason for...